Issue No. 602
Culture
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5 - 11 September 2002 Issue No. 602 Culture |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Plain Talk
In a few days we will mark the first anniversary of 11 September, and the infamous acts of terror that will be forever associated with that day. Here, at Al-Ahram, an exhibition of photographs will be inaugurated by Al- Ahram's editor-in-chief and the US ambassador to Egypt. This is but one example of many events that have been organised around the world to demonstrate that then, as now, we stand with Americans and share their grief.
How well I remember how the peoples and governments of the world reacted, with expressions of solidarity not only from across the Atlantic, but from countries as far as China and Russia. Following 11 September the whole world joined America in mourning. Never before had such global emotions been expressed.
And now a year has passed and the US is remembering that day. Since 11 September much water has passed beneath the bridge, though this is hardly the place to go through the events that followed, the war against terrorism, the battles in Afghanistan, the fall of the Taliban, the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic campaigns etc. There are already books written, plays performed and films screened on or related to what happened last year. Both the American and European press are full of articles and analyses of what one writer called the "fallout from the dust of 9/11". Never before had America enjoyed such friendship and empathy across the world.
Now the American people must be asking themselves and their administration where this friendship and empathy has gone. Why is America so hated in the world? The question must be pressing with some urgency, given that the American government is organising a conference to try and discover the reasons behind it.
Americans, though, do not have to look far to find the answers. Some of their writers and academicians have been offering them already. Ed Vulliamy and Laura Kurgan of Princeton University wrote two full pages in last week's Observer Review which are worth going through. The article bears the title "The city that never changed" and deals, among a number of themes, with this emerging dissatisfaction, to use a moderate term, with America.
One year on, say the writers "the United States is more isolated and more regarded as a pariah than at any time since Vietnam, possibly ever." They compare the banner of the French Le Monde on 12 September which was "Now we are all Americans" with another headline in Le Monde Diplomatique of last month which was "Washington dismantles the international architecture: a reflection on a year of treaties broken or ignored and a brazen assertion of the arrogance of power."
The article goes on to say that Washington's vociferous threats of war against Iraq are regarded by most European commentators and governments as "an attempt by the Bush administration to deflect attention from the problems with corporate sleaze at home".
Another critical voice, quoted in the same article, is that of professor Todd Gitlin, a well-known radical activist in the 1960s. He has ever hasher words when he says: "For a moment it was possible for Americans to understand and appreciate the fact that we were diabolically hated and to place ourselves in a world where many other people suffer ferociously. It was a chance to ask what is American power? What is American achievement? It was a great opportunity to get serious."
But the opportunity has not only been lost, it has been turned upside down "and we are isolated". The friendship and sympathy, the solidarity, have now all gone, and in their place there is disenchantment and even hatred. Which gives at least some food for thought when it comes to the conference which is being convened to try and find the roots of the current dislike of America. Maybe the opportunity, which in the opinion of Professor Gitlin was lost, can be regained.
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